The core research of the group is oriented towards advanced applications of optical fibres that range from optical signal processing to sophisticated sensing techniques.

Optical fibres are currently the most efficient and effective transmission lines and the Group develops advanced techniques to encode and decode information carried by light in optical fibres.

In particular the Group could demonstrate for the first time the possibility to modify and to control the speed of a light signal in an optical fibre, offering an important timing tool that was missing to control the information carried by light. This will impact on applications such as telecommunication networks, optical computing and optical storage (all optical memories storing a light signal that can be recalled later).

A technique leading to a dramatic increase in the capacityof optical fibres has also been recently achieved, in osmotic collaboration with the EPFL-PHOSL team. This simple, innovative solution reduces the amount of space required between the pulses of light that transport data. The breakthrough could increase the throughput of data in telecommunications systems by a factor of ten.

The group is also a key player on the global research scene in distributed fibre sensing based on optical nonlinearities. This type of sensors is foreseen to be an essential tool to secure critical installations, such as dams, tunnels and pipelines.

CONTACT INFO

NEWS

The Group for Fibre Optics has currently no opened position for aPhD student and no hiring will be simply possible beforeSummer 2018.

If you graduated or are about to graduate fromEPFL or a Swiss University, please contact directly Prof. L.Thévenaz with a motivation email and a CV.

If you graduated from a foreign University, please follow the procedure described under the Join us tab.

According to the number of requests, especially from Iran, please apologize the absence of response if the procedure is not strictly followed.

A new book has just been published, covering the concepts and the technology behind the most advanced applications of fibre optics. This book collects the teaching presented during a Training School organized by the COST Action 299 "FiDES" in Spring 2009 and gives all necessary background to understand modern applications of optical fibres.

The target public is Master+PhD students in optics, early-stage Researchers and Engineers involved in modern applications of optics.

Ten Times More Throughput on Optical Fibres thanks to perfect Nyquist pulses

We have recently demonstrated a technique to generate optical sinc-shaped Nyquist pulses of unprecedented quality. This major achievement is the result of a fertile collaboration with the Photonics Systems Laboratory at EPFL (PHOSL - Prof. Camille-Sophie Brès) and our visiting Professor Thomas Schneider from the Hochschule für Telekommunication, Leipzig, Germany.

These results and the technical description has just been published in Nature Communications in open-access.

Discover how to make all-optically mathematical operations like derivative, integrals and even time reversal in optical fibres!

In collaboration with the University of Padova in Italy, our group has developped a very powerful and flexible technique to realize all-optical signal processing in optical fibres and this has just been published in Nature Scientific Reports.

The lab activities are described for a wide public in the October 2012 issue of the review International Innovation entitled:

Swiss Pioneers

A high definition copy of the article, with an interview, can be downloaded here.

International Innovation is the leading global dissemination resource for the wider scientific, technology and research communities, dedicated to disseminating the latest science, research and technological innovations on a global level. More information and a complimentary subscription offer to the publication can be found at: www.researchmedia.eu

In the February issue of Spektrum der Wissenschaft, the German edition of Scientific American, our group has been invited to write an article dedicated to a wide public about the recent progresses in slow light, in collaboration with Prof. Thomas Schneider from Leipzig.